NPS Pros and Cons: Why Use NPS?

What you need to know about Net Promoter® Score criticism.

What do customers really think of your brand or products? Are they loyal? Do they like you enough to recommend you to their friends?

As a business owner or company manager, these are important topics to sort out. After all, if customers aren’t satisfied with the service they received, or if they don’t like your products, chances are, they won’t be repeat customers.

And, to top it off, with the ease of social media reviews, they could very well spread their negative experience across the internet.

As you’re probably already well aware, it’s definitely in your best interest to understand your customer’s opinions and to quickly address gaps that are causing customer dissatisfaction.

Enter: The Net Promoter® Score survey

A great, simple way to understand your customers’ level of loyalty is to send out a Net Promoter Score (NPS) survey example to your customers. The NPS system seeks to measure not just customer satisfaction, but it gauges whether customers like your company so much that they’d tell their friends about it.

It does this by asking one core question:

“How likely is it that you would recommend [Organization X] to a friend or colleague?”

Customers are asked to rate their answers on a 0-10 scale, which is divided up into three categories:

Net Promoter Score Criticism: Are there cons to using NPS surveys?

Before you dive in and start deploying your NPS questionnaire, you’re probably wondering: Are there drawbacks to the NPS system? As with any substantial customer surveying program your company takes on, you should definitely understand the pros and cons.

To help you sort through it all, we’ll cover the common criticisms of the NPS program, and we’ll discuss the differences between it and other common measurement tools, such as the sample Customer Satisfaction Score Survey (CSAT).

Net Promoter Score pros and cons

Let’s start off by examining the positive aspects of the NPS system, and look at ways it can help your company if you apply the findings to your business practices.

Pro: The NPS system is easy to use and it’s intuitive

The NPS online poll does not require a statistician to administer it. The example survey question is based around one idea—whether your customers like your company enough to recommend it—and it often includes a few follow-up example survey questions that seek to understand why people would recommend/would not recommend your brand. You can easily send it out to customers through email or post it on your website, and the calculation formula is intuitive and only requires a basic spreadsheet to calculate. (Or, if you use SurveyMonkey’s NPS template, we’ll handle the math for you!)

Pro: The NPS is great for management

When those in the executive suite at your company are looking for an easy, big-picture gauge of customer loyalty, the NPS works. Not only do Net Promoter Scores help a company see how it’s doing against the competition, but managers can use it to see how one department’s services are doing against other departments. For example, does the tech service division receive higher scores than the field-service department? If so, how can the company improve so that all of the departments are getting equal, high scores?

Pro: The NPS gives a common language in which to classify customers

The NPS questionnaire breaks scores down into three customer categories: Promoters, Detractors, and Passives. The categories make it easy to classify a customer’s level of loyalty, and it gives everyone in your company the same language when referring to customers. Do you have a large group of Promoters who you should rally to post reviews or participate in a focus group? Are there Detractors who you need to assign someone to do follow-up work with? The system makes it easy to tell customers apart.

Pro: The NPS system is correlated with increased business growth

The NPS isn’t just a great measure of customer loyalty—having high marks can also lead to business growth. Numerous studies, including those conducted by the Harvard Business Review, Satmetrix, and Bain & Company have found that there is a strong correlation between high Net Promoter Scores and revenue. The research shows that when companies adopt the NPS question, and use it as a key metric, it helps drive business growth as the company becomes more focused on improving the score.

For example, if your NPS is 61, but your industry average is 70, you know that, relative to your competition, you have work to do. Likewise, if your score is 70, but your competitors all have scores in the low 60s, you know you’re rating pretty high with customers.

Free Benchmark Data Report

Get the context you need to make even smarter decisions when you compare the results of your NPS survey against SurveyMonkey Benchmarks.

As you can see, there are many “pluses” in the NPS camp. Let’s visit some of the Net Promoter Score criticisms.

Con: The NPS system isn’t specific enough

Critics of the Net Promoter Score say that, while it may help you understand customer loyalty, it doesn’t specifically identify the reasons why your customers may be Detractors. To understand why your customers don’t like certain aspects of your company, make sure you follow up with more specific market research surveys or customer satisfaction example surveys.

Con: Without a plan in place to act on the results, the survey won’t help your business

The Net Promoter Scores that your business receives are kind of like a mirror of your company. If your company’s reflection is disheveled, unshaven, and messy, it may be uncomfortable to look into that mirror–especially if you don’t have a razor or comb around to clean the mess up.

Sending out a NPS questionnaire is a great first step to understanding customer loyalty, but to really make the NPS system effective, you need to be prepared with a follow-up plan. Say that your scores come back really low. What’s your next step? Will you send out more detailed surveys to pinpoint the issues? Do you have the resources in place to fix the broken logistics that may be leading to customer dissatisfaction? Make sure you map out a customer experience plan to address any issues your Net Promoter Scores reveal.

Net Promoter Score versus Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT) Survey

As part of your due-diligence process, you may be wondering, “But what about the other types of customer surveys out there, such as the CSAT?”

That’s a fine thing to wonder about.

The CSAT survey sample and the NPS are two of the most commonly used instruments to measure customer opinions, but they capture different types of data, and are typically used for specific purposes. So before you choose, ask yourself the following questions:

Do you want to measure the likelihood of customers returning?

If so, use the NPS. Because it tracks whether customers would refer your company, it’s a good gauge of whether they, themselves, would use your company’s services again.

Have you recently implemented a new training program for your employees? Are you trying to measure customer service, specifically?

If so, the CSAT is a good way to measure changes as a result of training or a new program. Send the CSAT online poll before the training and after to measure any changes.

Are you looking to measure your customer’s overall perception about your company? Do you want to know if your company has met your customer’s expectations?

The CSAT questionnaire is a great tool for this—it is designed to give you a holistic view of customer satisfaction.

We hope we answered your questions! It’s easy to get started with your NPS survey—we have the pre-designed template all ready for you. Just sign in to SurveyMonkey, or create a free account to get started! Make sure you take advantage of our free benchmarking report, following the study, so you can see how your score stacks up against the competition.